if it wasn't for liquid crystals. And there were other experiments he had in mind where I thought it would be a really fun field to be in. One thing that hurt the company a lot in the early years, a company down in Texas started making cholesteric displays infringing on our technology. It was so secret, I never knew what it was, but we were given the contract to develop the display for it. We were able to get grants to help us with this. It was called JTech. But in the end, I don't know how the military gets their displays today. 2292 Bayswater Dr NW, Kennesaw, GA 30144 | Zillow Kennesaw GA For Sale Apply Price Price Range Minimum - Maximum Apply Beds & Baths Bedrooms Bathrooms Apply Home Type Deselect All Houses Townhomes Multi-family Condos/Co-ops Lots/Land Apartments Manufactured More filters My father, early on, had bought me a crystal radio set. After he got his degree, he worked in industry, and it could've been that he just didn't understand academia. Like Peter Palffy and John West, he originally came into the liquid crystal institute under the title senior research fellow, with no professorship as did Adriaan De Vries and several others. Special Features: 9 Foot Ceilings, Boardwalk, Built In Dry Bar, Car Care Center, Electric Car Charging Stations, First Floor, Free Weights, Group Excercise, Large Walk In Closets, Pooch Park Pet Spa, Spa, Wi Fi, Garage, Short Term Lease, Try to keep your rent within a third of your gross household income. Les Avenires Veyrins-Thuellin : Les Avenires Veyrins-Thuellin Localisation : Country France, Region Auvergne-Rhne-Alpes, Department Isre. One way to do that was not to take an exclusive license for the entire patent, but to narrow it down [and license it for some specific application]. Turns out, it was extremely important because later on, when we came to the ALCOM [Advanced Liquid Crystalline Optical Materials] Center, that was extremely valuable.CRAWFORD: Why was that?DOANE: At that time NSF started a new program for Science and Technology Centers, and it was a new direction for NSF. Al didn't want to get involved in the lawsuit probably because his former student working with him had worked for Hoffmann-La Roche. In engineering, you need to take some basic courses in chemistry, physics, and so on. For more information, please see our We were all going to research conferences etc., but the cohesiveness of the group funded under NSF individual grants began to degrade. CRAWFORD: When he did talk about applications, it was mostly in cancer detection work with breast cancer and so forth, and less about the work on displays and stuff. CRAWFORD: And this is the ALCOM Center. Evidently, he could not get Glenn Brown to participate either.CRAWFORD: It sounds like, on the one hand, Fergason files these patents claiming he did the work separate from the university, but now Timex is coming back with this lawsuit against Kent State. I'm delighted you're doing it.CRAWFORD: Well, I want to just thank you again for being so generous with your time and sharing your story. [Laugh] It was clear that it was really going to take off. Patents aren't as convenient of a thing as you'd like to think they might be. The University wanted to license it, and I talked the University into letting me form a company around this. [Laugh] I had to try to tie all of these programs together to show how they could blend together. CRAWFORD: Did GM or Hughes send people as well?DOANE: We had demonstrations from Hughes and other companies, but I don't remember exactly the demos they provided. At that particular time, the dean for research here wanted me to get involved in this lawsuit. I'm glad to hear it. It wasn't easy for the company to do all that. They were further instrumental in involving other industries such as 3M.] Is there a particular reason why they focused on that type of cell at that time?DOANE: I don't know their reasoning, but I can tell you why I'd choose it. DOANE: The early 70s, of course, is when the THEMIS grant was going. Everybody seemed happy with that, so we did it. CRAWFORD: You mentioned GM giving money for a clean room and that kind of thing. It's very unusual, at least today, that somebody has a patent in one country and somebody has a patent for the same thing in another country. For example, there was Bell Labs doing a lot of feasibility work of combining basic research with applied and developing such things as the transistor. I just looked at it from the point of view of fundamentally understanding the liquid crystal material states of matter. I could see the possibility of getting a contract from a defense agency at that time, so I talked to Bill Manning about more funding to push the company further into the development of full color high resolution displays for military and other uses.. Much to my surprise, right away, Bill Manning was willing to put in substantially more money. I found that interesting because we were involved with universities studying other kinds of optical materials. In '65, when I was interviewing for the positions, there was already some work going on here and there around the country. CRAWFORD: Where might we see some of these signs today? The THEMIS grant [, however, was really the stimulus for a large liquid crystal research effort at KSU. And the city of Kent got nothing from it. CRAWFORD: In a Daily Kent Stater article in 1973, Wilbur Franklin, professor of physics, who actually wrote an op-ed responding to the student protests. Universities don't like to get too involved in this business. It was doing very well then to give a new director time to settle in before ALCOM ended.CRAWFORD: Did you ever consider just stepping down as director and going back to doing research as a faculty member?DOANE: Back then, you could retire, and after you were retired for so many years, you could run the Institute again. We had no such thing here [but we needed to start].CRAWFORD: Are there other benefits you think come from that aside from providing employment for students? I had virtually nothing to work with, so I had to get [a vacuum] tube, and then I didnt know how to mount this tube. He had a liquid crystal program. You can learn more about the company by talking with Asad. I had good industrial and other support for this site visit. You have to give it to Jim, he really understood the value of this twist cell technology. And if you publish it, you can't further develop it in order to patent it. That was very attractive to them, too. As I understand Phil, this display technology you're looking at right there on your cell phone is from one of our students.CRAWFORD: For the audio, you're showing me an Apple iPhone. It really got into the writing experience, as well as advancing it to fit this into digital technology, how to do it in color, things like that. Another kind he was working on was called a guest host display, where you dissolve a dye material in a liquid crystal, the liquid crystal orders this dye material, and by changing the orientation of the liquid crystals with an electric field, you can change how colorful it is. That was the reason I came to Kent. I thought it was a way to help graduate research.CRAWFORD: When you said you wanted to tie the faculty together, it's really thinking in terms of building the University, building the graduate program. Kent State university and its ALCOM center has probably graduated more students in the display industry than any other university in the US. I never did like the idea of the technology going to Asia when it was really developed here in the US and in Europe. As a university, we may have, at one time, been the largest contributor to talks and demonstrations at those Society conferences. It was manufacturable, you could coat it and do various things you could not do with liquid crystals alone. It was sort of an informal, gradual retirement. I thought it was great. Fergason got interested in display development. So, that sort of thing? He did marvelous things, like starting the Institute and the International Liquid Crystal Conferences. With over 175 stores, shop the brands you love including H&M, PINK, Sephora, Ame See more Town Center at Cobb is a wonderful climate-controlled indoor mall, conveniently located two blocks east of I-75 at Exit 269 on Barrett Parkway. I can give you a lot of stories about that. After I finished that, the Army discovered that I and one other guy in this class were physicists, and they said they needed communications officers. That may have been what caught their attention. It really got very bad. Copyright 2023 eRealEstate Holdings, LLC. The reason they focused on these three companies was that they could make a flat-panel screen made up of thousands of tiny pixels, where each pixel operated independently. It's very different today than back then.CRAWFORD: When the company first started, it didn't have a manufacturing line. one day when inevitably you get in a heated discussion with ur old man you got one hell of a card to play. LGBTQ Legal Protections updated by Movement Advancement Project. That was the discovery of polymer liquid crystal dispersions! New York Nails. For Sale 2937 Governors Court, Marietta, GA 30066. Joel turned out to be terrific. It can be green, red, whatever you want it to be. I thought, "Oh, he's switching between two bistable structures, something that others had not been able to do. And he was very helpful and supportive of this sort of thing. The benefit is that they can say, "Look what we're doing for the local economy." The liquid crystals just weren't very good with that at that time. There is one here at Kent Displays that is used to welcome people.CRAWFORD: I've seen that. I saw an opportunity [to develop high-definition flat panel displays for the defense agencies]. With See more 27,359 people like this The Town Center at Cobb shopping mall in Kennesaw will stay closed for at least 11 days, its parent company announced. But he wound up going to General Motors. We've talked a little bit about how the academic and industrial worlds were in some ways separate universes. I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you to tell us a little bit about what it's been like living through the COVID pandemic over the last year, what effects it's had on your professional and personal lives, whatever you'd like to share. But, eventually, we were able to come up with a plan that convinced them to grant a license and we formed KDI. It's unclear how the company plans to revitalize the mall or if . MLS ID: 10127388. 2 hours from Lincoln, NE. For example, without that, I probably couldn't even have convinced Rudy Butler to build this building and centralize the effort on the research campus. The two come together through technology transfer and patent agreements]. That's another big story. The Mill at Chastain Floor Plans & Pricing. A researcher can think he has something really great until he has to make something out of it. That was a very nice program. It required a liquid crystal, in scientific jargon, with a positive dielectric anisotropy. In the early 80s, Glenn gave me the title of associate director. $269,900. The only ways to do that were visibility and having something really pertaining to the needs of the country. I didn't like the way this ended up.CRAWFORD: Just to play devil's advocate, would it be fair to say that this was a product of maybe the decision to have the LCI off-campus? No. We didn't have that technology. [Laugh]CRAWFORD: Why do you say that?DOANE: If the Institute had had a display program going, it would've been a bonanza. As with other faculty in physics and chemistry,] it helped me build up a very nice laboratory with a lot of students involved. CRAWFORD: But there was a sense that youd kind of developed all the major lines of basic research?DOANE: Somewhat, however, another major event was happening. CRAWFORD: Was there a sense at that time in the late 60s and the 70s, was there a sense that academic science was a different world than industrial science?DOANE: Yes. They wanted to show that there was economic benefit to all of this. And the governor came. [Laugh] CRAWFORD: Did you see patenting as a way of kind of signaling that the Institute was moving into applied research?DOANE: No, I didn't see it from that point of view. I visited many potential investors, the contacts that I set up were on my own.] After a few years that wound up being licensed in Japan [where it was further developed ultimately into the display technology we have in our TVs, computers, etc., today. When I graduated, I had to go into the Army because in order to keep from going into the Army while I was in collegethe Korean War was going on, and I didn't want to get pulled out of college to have to go to Korea. I thought liquid crystals were really a great thing to focus on. In this other article he was interviewed for, which was talking about the work that was being done on displays with watch faces, calculators, and so forth, Dr. Franklin said, in the context of this article, "Research at the Institute here in Kent is not motivated by entrepreneurship. However, from another point of view, it never hurts to have a crisis because it causes people to think other ways. Weather forecast for the next coming days and current time of Les Avenires Veyrins-Thuellin. Best Buy Kennesaw 850 Cobb Place Blvd NW Kennesaw, GA 30144 Get Directions 1000 feet 250 m 2023 Microsoft Corporation Terms Store Hours Open Now - Closes at 8:00 PM Curbside Pickup Hours Open Now - Closes at 8:00 PM E-mail Us (770) 424-7868 Top Deals On this Page: Shop Specialty Shops & Services Promotions FAQs Reviews Nearby Stores About CRAWFORD: Just thinking about this historical moment, and you mentioned the shootings, which of course happened May 4, 1970, part of this whole moment with the protest against the Vietnam War. A guy in England named George Gray, who Glenn had worked with. Glenn called me into his office and wanted to talk about Jim Fergason. The more you know about what they want, the better proposal you can write, the better you can fit in, the better you can adjust what you're doing to what they're doing. Because part of the issue is that you're getting federal funding, so the research is supposed to be a public good, so how could you make it private? But when I married Shirley, she knew from the very beginning I wanted to go back to graduate school. Early 80s. It was the first patent I ever wrote. Your people want to be part of the academic environment. Theoretically, you could make what was called a raser. We turned out a lot of students who really knew liquid crystal display technology and went into industry.CRAWFORD: Phil Bos is a professor?DOANE: He's a physics professor working at the liquid crystal institute. Good morning, Dr. Doane. CRAWFORD: But students still get their PhD in chemical physics?DOANE: As I understand it, they do [but it may now be broadened to material sciences. It was horrible. A display researcher, Wolfgang Helfrich, when he was at RCA worked with a group that explored many of these ways to make liquid crystal displays. ]CRAWFORD: When you took over as director, obviously you were moving in this applied direction, but did you also want to develop the LCI's relationship with companies?DOANE: Oh, yes, I did. Kansas Manhattan Houses $1,400 710 S Manhattan Ave 710 S Manhattan Ave, Manhattan, KS 66502 South Manhattan 2 Beds 1 Bath 1400 Sqft Contact Property Learn more, take a tour, and get one step closer to your new home. He could not have done it if it hadn't been for the president, Robert White. When Al Green joined we already had this manufacturing line. Those were kind of my early years. From Akron University [we have hired students with expertise in polymers. CRAWFORD: In 2007, you received another award, the Slottow-Owaki Prize from the Society of Information Displays, and this is an award for your contribution to the education and training of students and professionals in the field of information display. You need a very bright backlight behind it to see a color image. CRAWFORD: I've been reading Brown's papers and looking at the early annual reports from what it sounds like, from what he was writing and putting in the reports at the time, he really saw the primary focus of the Institute as studying the structure of liquid crystals. It stands for Advanced Liquid Crystal Optical Materials. Also, the US. However, since then, I retired in '96, and around 2010 or so, they moved the faculty in Chemical Physics into the various departments, like physics and chemistry. As I pointed out, when I went to the first Society meeting, I didn't see any other universities, it was all industry and they were getting heavily involved with liquid crystal displays. He was going to give a paper on liquid crystals as temperature sensors.CRAWFORD: This was the year you finished your PhD?DOANE: Yes, either '64 or '65. Mine were in Missouri, and by that time, hers were in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I wound up getting the equipment that Bell Labs was using. I think that was primarily the attractiveness of it. I wanted to see more spin-off companies. Of course, we pay for it, but it's nice to have that facility available, and it's nice for them to make it available.CRAWFORD: Did Kent Displays then, and does it now, send its own people to use the facilities? Request Tour Send an Email Highlights Here are some of the most popular amenities Air Conditioning Floor Plans 1 unit available Studio I'm glad you're talking to other people, not just me, and really getting a good handle on what actually happened. I was dismayed that Glenn and Fergason didn't really work together to take advantage of this for Kent State University. [Laugh] That program was very helpful in building up our program and getting more involved in display research. The attitude in industry for commercializing the technology ultimately was just not there. DOANE: Yes, except that back then, it was even more difficult because I think this was prior to the time of the Bayh-Dole Act that gave universities more freedom in the patent business.CRAWFORD: Yes, 1980. [And I wanted to get Alfred Saupe, Adriaan De Vries , who was doing X-rays, Mary Neubert, a synthetic chemist and others at the Institute, into the programs at the research campus and more involved with the department faculty]. He was very good at setting people at ease. Our property was not on a highway, but he managed to purchase a few acres on a highway and built this filling station, again, out of sod. ]CRAWFORD: Having worked in this field, what does technology transfer mean? We had a big handicap here at Kent State because there was no electrical engineering department at Kent at that time. That turned out to be a wise, wise decision because the job opportunities in that field are far higher. I come from the academic world. DOANE: Yes, I think that's [one major benefit]. There were some US companies such as General Motors and a few others, but it was mostly going across the ocean. [End Part 2][Start Part 3]. Those were pretty much my early years in a nutshell.CRAWFORD: What was it that attracted you to radio?DOANE: I'm not really sure. We had a nice program that went on for years with a group at Hughes Research, [headed by David Margerum], developing displays and various kinds of things. And [the liquid crystal work] just died out. But Bill Manning really got interested in this technology. In 2008, Simon Property Group pumped millions into a major interior renovation for Town Center at Cobb as a way to boost sales. NSF was supporting a lot of basic research, but there was no indication of how it was actually going into technology. In the case of student dissertations, it is necessary to publish. Contributor to talks and demonstrations at those Society conferences Tulsa, Oklahoma Glenn... A raser stimulus for a clean room and that kind of thing 've been that he just did n't a! Are n't as convenient of a card to play [ the liquid crystals alone i talked the University into me. 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